Forgiveness Is Always Free
by tamiiland
Summary: While in a coma, Mark Sloan dreams of Heaven - or as close to Heaven as it can get.


**Forgiveness is Always Free**

* * *

Mark Sloan was sure he was dreaming for two reasons. First: he wasn't in a stretcher and waiting to die. Second: the person standing in front of him couldn't be, in fact, standing in front of him. Because he had seen her die. He could still recall the exact time when her heart stopped beating.

'Lexie.'

'Mark,' she said sweetly, her ponytail swishing. 'You missed me?'

He stumbled forward and enveloped her against his chest, feeling the familiar warmness of Alexandra C. Grey seep through the fabrics and cling to his cold, cold body. Something kindled inside him, stirring and purring and blinking out of its daze. He inhaled her scent, clean and bright and slightly fruity. One way or another, he was home.

'Lexie,' Sloan said again. He meant to whisper it, like a furtive word of adoration to an earthly god, but his voice broke on the word the same way a twig might break during a hurricane.

'Mark,' she answered patiently, lithe arms snaking around his waist and holding him close. 'Something wrong?'

'Do you even know how much I love you?' he blurted out.

'Well, I don't know,' she teased, looking into his eyes. 'Do you?'

'I do, yes, and—God, I'm so sorry it took me this long. I just, I love you. We're meant to be. And you were right: it does feel good to say it.'

'Say what?'

'That I love you. I love you. I never did really try to move on and Julia was great but she wasn't you,' he confessed, cradling her face under his chin and focusing on the way her breath tickled his throat. 'She never stood a chance against you and, oh my God, I'm a horrible human being for doing this to her, to you, to us.'

The words flowed out of his mouth like a torrent. Every syllable that catapulted out of his lips was one less cross for him to bear. He was stripping himself bare and giving Lexie what little he had that was worthy of her.

'But you're so young and I wanted grown-up things. Old-man things. I wanted kids and a backyard full of flowers and, don't you dare laugh at my American dream, I wanted a dog. Two dogs, if we couldn't settle for just one. I wanted all those things, all of them, with you. I wanted you to be at the centre of it.' He breathed in. He might be silently crying. 'You're beautiful and I miss you so much, but that doesn't even come close to how I feel about you. English is too simple a language to be able to fully express my feelings for you.'

She looked awestruck and at a loss of words, so of course she said the first silly thing that came to her mind, and he loved her for it.

'Well, try another language.'

'But that's the problem,' Sloan said gravelly, fighting the urge to brush their lips together. 'Languages didn't plan for you.'

Her smile could melt the universe. 'They didn't?'

'No,' he whispered conspiringly. 'How could they plan for you if you're so out of this world not even God saw you coming?'

She laughed breathlessly, her soft brown eyes twinkling up at him like a thousand stars in a moonless night and her smile growing ten times stronger. Forget the universe, she could melt space and time if she so wished.

'Dr Sloan, you're like Casanova reloaded.'

'And I don't even know what you are,' he said honestly. Because, really, he didn't. Was she a ghost? A vision? An illusion of his dying mind? 'Only that you're beyond perfect and you're mine.'

'I'm yours?'

He leant down and nuzzled her neck. 'Yep.'

'Hmm, I guess we can agree on that,' she said, smiling against his ear. 'I'll be yours forever, no matter what.'

'I'd like that very, very much, Dr Grey.' He kissed her jawline. 'And you can have me—if you'd like.'

'I would,' Lexie agreed. 'I would. A lot.'

She searched his lips and gave him a long, deep kiss that left them both slightly out of breath when they finally broke apart. He opened his eyes first and his gaze trailed the quivering curve of her closed eyelids, small miracles worth worshipping. Then it was simply sliding down the barely-there freckles of her nose until he reached the arches of her lovely lips, tender and sweet. He wanted to breathe life into those lips, fill her with his heartbeat and never let her go.

Her eyes opened, and they were large and sad and strikingly beautiful.

'I'll be waiting for you,' Lexie whispered.

'I won't be long,' Sloan promised quietly.

She smiled ruefully. 'I know.'

* * *

**A/N:** I accidentally made myself sad.

«Forgiveness is always free.  
But that doesn't mean that confession is always easy.  
Sometimes it is hard. Incredibly hard.  
It is painful to admit our sins and entrust ourselves to God's care.»

— Lutzer, Erwin W.

**Words:** 790


End file.
